Latin America reduces hunger but faces a sharp rise in obesity

The 2025 Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition highlights progress in the fight against hunger but calls for stronger comprehensive policies to tackle overweight, gender inequality and the high cost of healthy food.

Latin America and the Caribbean showed a reduction in undernourishment levels for the fourth consecutive period. The 2025 Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition reported that in 2024, 5.1% of the population of these countries suffered from chronic hunger. That is a reduction of 6.1% since 2020.

The document highlights that 6.2 million people stopped suffering from undernourishment over this four-year period. Among the countries that have made the most progress in this regard are Brazil, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Guyana, which maintain a rate below 2.5%. At the same time, Chile and Mexico are close to reaching that figure. 

The figures published in the Regional Overview show that South America led the improvement, with a sustained average hunger rate of 3.8%, almost one percentage point lower than in 2022. Mesoamerica, meanwhile, remained at around 5%, while the Caribbean recorded 17.5%, owing to the current situation in Haiti, where 54.2% of the population suffers from undernourishment.

Although the UN is optimistic about these numbers, it is also watching other data with concern, such as the rise in obesity in the Latin America and Caribbean region. The report notes that 29.9% of the population lives with this condition, almost double the global average of 15.8%. Among boys and girls under 5, overweight reached 8.8% in 2024, well above the global target for 2030.

In this regard, the United Nations stressed the need to sustain comprehensive policies to address inequalities, improve access to nutritious food and combat overweight and obesity, especially in childhood. 

On this point, the World Food Programme's regional director, Lena Savelli, stated that international organizations and governments cannot speak of real progress while there are gaps that leave millions of people behind, particularly women.

It is worth noting that obesity has become one of the main public health challenges globally, and the region has some of the fastest growth rates. According to the World Health Organization, excess weight increases the risk of developing noncommunicable diseases such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular conditions and certain types of cancer. It also affects people's mental health, quality of life and life expectancy, placing a growing burden on health systems.

Joint work with PAHO

Together with nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) is working on a project to strengthen action against obesity in the region.

This issue dates back to the 75th World Health Assembly in 2022, where countries approved the World Health Organization (WHO) Acceleration Plan to Stop Obesity, which seeks to halt the steady rise of this condition through a comprehensive approach combining regulatory and multidimensional strategies.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the PAHO project is led by Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Uruguay, and it is expected that these processes will serve as a model for a future expansion of the Plan throughout the region.

Among the strategies of the Acceleration Plan, PAHO and the participating countries include front-of-package warning labeling on food products, regulation of the marketing of unhealthy food products, the promotion of breastfeeding, regulation of the food sold in schools and the adoption of fiscal policies that encourage healthy diets.

PAHO considers the situation worrying, because countries in the region must simultaneously respond to persistent infectious diseases and to an increase in chronic conditions associated with overweight. This entails high health costs, leading to long-term economic and social consequences linked to productivity and quality of life.

One of the important points highlighted by both the UN and PAHO is that access to a healthy diet is key, and that in Latin America and the Caribbean it is more expensive than anywhere else in the world. In 2024, the average daily cost reached US$5.16, following an annual increase of 3.8%. Although 15.4 million more people were able to afford it compared with 2021, 181.9 million still cannot bear that expense. Unless a solution to this is found soon, the organizations say, no plan can work properly. 

Guillermo Whpei

President of Fundación para la Democracia